Perfect Days

Moment by moment by moment, lived gracefully and honorably, makes a life.

Sabbath Poem VII (1982) + Wendell Berry

The clearing rests in song and shade.
It is a creature made
By old light held in soil and leaf,
By human joy and grief,
By human work,
Fidelity of sight and stroke,
By rain, by water on
The parent stone.

We join our work to Heaven’s gift,
Our hope to what is left,
That field and woods at last agree
In an economy
Of widest worth.
High Heaven’s Kingdom come on earth.
Imagine Paradise.
O Dust, arise!

Last Chance at Reconciliation | Joshua Mehigan

He’s certain where he’s headed it’s too late.
West Broadway glitters in a mist of rain
that amber cones of light elucidate.
He’s certain. Where he’s headed, it’s too late
to stop for flowers, dry off, or get things straight:
a story, his misshapen hat, his brain.
He’s certain where he’s headed. It’s too late.
West Broadway glitters in a mist of rain.

N.B. An example of a “triolet,” a form that’s not much in vogue these days (if ever). But I think this is an excellent, sad poem. I especially appreciate how the repeated first line changes meaning simply through varying punctuation.

Ash Wednesday Poem

Sabbaths 1979 | Wendell Berry

V

How many have relinquished
Breath, in grief or rage,
The victor and the vanquished
Named on the bitter page

Alike, or indifferently
Forgot–all that they did
Undone entirely.
The dust they stirred has hid

Their faces and their works,
Has settled, and lies still.
Nobody rests or shirks
Who must turn in time’s mill.

They wind the turns of the mill
In house and field and town;
As grist is ground to meal
The grinders are ground down.

Welcome Morning | Anne Sexton

There is joy
in all:
in the hair I brush each morning,
in the Cannon towel, newly washed,
that I rub my body with each morning,
in the chapel of eggs I cook
each morning,
in the outcry from the kettle
that heats my coffee
each morning,
in the spoon and the chair
that cry "hello there, Anne"
each morning,
in the godhead of the table
that I set my silver, plate, cup upon
each morning.

All this is God,
right here in my pea-green house
each morning
and I mean,
though often forget,
to give thanks,
to faint down by the kitchen table
in a prayer of rejoicing
as the holy birds at the kitchen window
peck into their marriage of seeds.

So while I think of it,
let me paint a thank-you on my palm
for this God, this laughter of the morning,
lest it go unspoken.

The Joy that isn't shared, I've heard,
dies young.

“Tiger” | Farid Khan, trans. by Tuhin Bhowal

I’m hopeful that
to save its own species,
the tiger will become a poet,
the way dinosaurs became lizards,
And the poet, occasionally, a tiger

Window Seat

In the coffee shop,
I saw a customer reading a big thick book,
It looked serious, printed on heavy paper, hardback with a jacket.

I tried to see the title, but he packed up
Before I got a look. Now I’ll never know.

A woman sat in the same seat after him.
She also brought a book. This one,
I could see the title.

Comfortable With Uncertainty.

Eden Rock | Charles Causley

They are waiting for me somewhere beyond Eden Rock:
My father, twenty-five, in the same suit
Of Genuine Irish Tweed, his terrier Jack
Still two years old and trembling at his feet.
My mother, twenty-three, in a sprigged dress
Drawn at the waist, ribbon in her straw hat,
Has spread the stiff white cloth over the grass.
Her hair, the colour of wheat, takes on the light.
She pours tea from a Thermos, the milk straight
From an old H.P. sauce-bottle, a screw
Of paper for a cork; slowly sets out
The same three plates, the tin cups painted blue.
The sky whitens as if lit by three suns.
My mother shades her eyes and looks my way
Over the drifted stream. My father spins
A stone along the water. Leisurely,
They beckon to me from the other bank.
I hear them call, ‘See where the stream-path is!
Crossing is not as hard as you might think.’
I had not thought that it would be like this.

“Here we are!"

… the stars shone in their watches, and were glad;
he called them, and they said, ‘Here we are!’
They shone with gladness for him who made them.

Baruch 3:34

With its lovely patience

Fall is. It always comes round, with its lovely patience. If in the beginning it’s restless, at the end it’s resigned, complete in its waiting, complete in the utter correctness of what it has to tell us. Which is that we’re transitory.

Joy Wiilliams, via Austin Kleon

Mono no aware